


wrap me up in silk and lace

by tamerofdarkstars



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Five Times, Hugs, Minor pining, Pre-Relationship, but specifically in this case this fic is about effie and hugs, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23994310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamerofdarkstars/pseuds/tamerofdarkstars
Summary: Five significant hugs in the life of Effie Trinket over the course of her relationship with Haymitch Abernathy
Relationships: Haymitch Abernathy/Effie Trinket
Comments: 7
Kudos: 110





	wrap me up in silk and lace

**Author's Note:**

> man it's been a while, hello hunger games, it's nice to see you again
> 
> this is part of a little fic challenge i set myself while hanging out indoors this month:
> 
> something old - write a fic for an old fandom   
> something new - write a fic a new fandom   
> something borrowed - write a fic for a fandom someone else is waaaay more into than you are; a "borrowed" fandom  
> something blue - write a fic for a trope you have never written before
> 
> this fic counts for my "something borrowed" category. enjoy and stay safe out there!

Their children were dead and Haymitch had thrown up all over the steps. Effie took a deep breath through her mouth, trying to avoid the stench of vomit, and slowly counted to ten. When she hit ten, she would be composed again.

“Oh, do get up, you… you...” But the insult on the tip of her tongue wasn’t befitting a lady, so she pressed her painted lips together and bent down so she was level with Haymitch, slumped against the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

“Haymitch,” she said, prodding him in the shoulder with the tip of one gloved finger. “Get up.”

He muttered at her, something unintelligible but no doubt rude, and Effie’s already frayed nerves stretched even thinner.

“Alright,” she sniffed, standing up. She crossed the suite, heels sharp against the tiles, and picked up the crystalline water pitcher from the side table. It was still full. Their tributes hadn’t even lasted long enough for the ice to begin to melt.

She crossed the room back to Haymitch and upturned the entire pitcher over his head in one brisk, no-nonsense motion.

He spluttered, yelping as frigid water cascaded over his head, and he scrambled to his feet like an angry cat.

“What the _hell_ ,” he snapped, dragging a hand down his face. He stumbled, just a bit, and Effie reached out a hand and put it on his shoulder to steady him.

“You threw up all over the stairs. Honestly, Haymitch,” Effie said, putting the pitcher down on the ground by their feet. “I think it’s time you went to bed.”

Haymitch squinted at her for a second, hair hanging down around his face in unattractive damp strings. There was something crusted at the corner of his mouth that Effie was determinedly ignoring. There was a small part of her, a teeny tiny corner of her heart that had idolized Haymitch as a Victor, that couldn’t help but be crushed every time he failed to live up to her expectations.

“Fine,” he grunted. Effie dropped her hand from his shoulder, only to immediately replace it when Haymitch swayed unconvincingly.

“Do you need help?” she asked. Haymitch scowled at her.

“No,” he said, but Effie had had enough. Ignoring him, she stepped in closer and slipped an arm around his waist, pressing her hand firmly into his hip to keep him steady.

“Alright, let’s go. This way.”

Haymitch stank of alcohol and sweat and for a split second, hauling the District Twelve Mentor across the room towards the living quarters, Effie wanted to be entirely unprofessional. She wanted to scream, to yell, to throw something across the room and watch it shatter. She wanted the looks of terror on those kids’ faces to fade from her memory. She wanted Haymitch to be sober for once in his damn life so she didn’t have to do this alone.

But the moment passed, and Effie straightened her spine and tightened her grip on Haymitch’s waist. She felt him shift his weight, leaning on her a bit more heavily, then felt his arm fumble its way up her back until he’d draped it across her shoulders. She reached up and grabbed his wrist, holding on as they made their slow and uncomfortable way towards the living quarters.

She deposited him on the bed, letting him land face down with a thump on the bedclothes. She shoved his shoulder, forcing him to roll onto his side because the absolute last thing she needed was Haymitch choking to death on vomit in the middle of the night.

“Honestly,” she said, hands on her hips as she stared down at the man who was supposed to be her partner. Haymitch blinked blearily up at her.

“Hey...” he said, voice rough and uncertain. Effie waited, one eyebrow raised in expectation. Surely this would be an apology – she thought she certainly deserved one at any rate.

There was a beat, then a noise like air being let out of a balloon. Haymitch sighed, content.

Color flooded Effie’s face, embarrassment followed swiftly by disgust. Without another word, she turned and stormed from the room, striking the lights a bit too hard in her fury as she left.

Victor he may have been, but Effie could not see a future in which she could _ever_ get along with that absolute careless miscreant. It was clear to her now that she would never be able to depend on Haymitch Abernathy. She would just have to lead District 12’s tributes to victory alone.

\--

Effie had not slept in hours, unable to stop pacing in front of the viewing screen, wringing her hands together.

“Settle down, sweetheart,” Haymitch drawled from behind her, legs kicked up on the ottoman. She shot him a look, crimson lips turned down in a scowl and he met her gaze head-on.

He looked… less careless than usual, Effie noticed. The glass in his hand was full of ice water, his knuckles white as he gripped it, too busy watching the screen to even take a sip. Tension lined his body, hunching his shoulders and showing itself in the restless tap tap tap of his pointer finger against his thigh.

“I am perfectly calm,” Effie said, the words absolutely meaningless when anyone in the entire world could tell that she was the exact opposite of calm.

Haymitch grunted, putting the still full water glass on the little side table and shoving himself to his feet. He dragged his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back off his face, before crossing the room to her. He put both hands on her shoulders, calluses brushing the soft exposed skin of her shoulders, but Effie barely had time to be offended before he was tipping her forward, pressing her into his chest as both hands slid around to press between her shoulder blades.

It was an awkward embrace, made even more uncomfortable by the ruching on Effie’s dress that was crushed between them, and the fact that Haymitch didn’t exactly smell the freshest, but any protests Effie had died even as she drew breath to speak them. Instead she simply stood there, Haymitch’s arms around her shoulders, and stared at his collarbone as the sheer weight of every single moment of these strange, strange Games welled up inside her.

Her throat burned and she closed her eyes, trying to regain control of herself. Ladies did not cry in public and her makeup that morning had taken ages. To smear it now would be a crime.

“They’re doing fine,” Haymitch said, after a long moment of silence. Effie wondered if he’d spent all that time searching for something to say. Of course he had. She had to be strong – of all the times to fall apart, honestly, Effie. Her mother would have been furious. Humiliated.

She took a deep breath, flexing her fingers in their little silken gloves at her sides.

“This,” she said, eyes fixed firmly on the hollow at the base of Haymitch’s throat, “is _highly_ inappropriate.”

There was a beat of surprised silence, then another. Then Haymitch scoffed out a laugh, an ugly grunted noise and released her, stepping back. “Of course,” he said, and Effie tilted her chin proudly at the mocking smirk on his face. “ _Do_ forgive me for trying to—”

But he cut himself off before Effie could hear what exactly it was he’d been trying to do, and without another word he turned away from her, grabbing the glass of water from the side table. He was not particularly gentle and water slopped over the lip of the glass, splashing down onto the table and down his front as he tipped the glass back and drained the entire thing in three long gulps.

Effie brushed her hands down her front, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles for lack of anything else to do and turned her attention firmly back to the screen as Katniss Everdeen once again was framed front and center.

“The camera certainly does love her,” Effie commented, but when she looked over her shoulder for Haymitch, she found that he’d disappeared, leaving Effie alone in the suite.

A strange stab of disappointment curled in the pit of her stomach and wordlessly she turned back to the screen.

Well. Perhaps it was for the better.

_\--_

Her fingers were trembling as she picked up the only slip of paper on the pedestal. The entire morning felt like a blur, something smeared and surreal, and even as Effie stared down at the little black letters on that scrap of paper in her hands, she was struck by how unfair this was.

Katniss and Peeta were supposed to be living the lives of Victors. Lives of luxury and fame and fortune and—

And Haymitch had laughed in her face when she’d mentioned it on the train, hours after Katniss and Peeta had squirreled themselves away to hide, trapped in a limbo where being together was difficult but being apart was even worse.

_Luxury?_ he’d said with a snort. _Sweetheart, winning doesn’t guarantee you anything except nightmares and substance abuse problems_.

“Katniss Everdeen,” she said, looking out at the blank-faced crowd of District 12 residents. She couldn’t look at them – not at Katniss’s sister, so much like Katniss in the stubborn set of her jaw, and instead turned to look at Katniss herself. Katniss slowly turned to make eye contact with her and Effie saw with a jolt a single tear trailing down her cheek. Katniss, her strong fierce girl – did she even realize she was crying?

Her throat closed and she had to swallow several times as Katniss crossed the scant distance to her. Effie put a hand delicately between Katniss’s shoulder blades and she wondered when exactly this had stopped being fun. She’d used to love the Reapings – she’d loved taking the trips out of the cities, loved being the one to open up a door of glory and opportunity for the less fortunate, here in District 12 especially where they had so few of the luxuries the Capitol had to offer.

Had it been when Katniss had volunteered for her sister? Had that been the moment, looking into Katniss’s face twisted in rage and desperation, that the seed had been planted? Or had it been later as she’d watched the Games, realizing with increasing desperation that even if she was lucky enough to have Reaped a Victor that year, that she couldn’t imagine a world where Katniss and Peeta didn’t have each other to lean on?

“Wonderful,” she said, and even she could hear the falseness in the cheer she was forcing into her voice. Katniss took a deep, steadying breath beside her. “And now for the men.”

She turned and instantly her eyes fell on Haymitch, standing beside Peeta. His head was turned towards her as well and – her heart leaped, then fell as she realized he wasn’t looking at her, but past her. He nodded at Katniss and the tips of Effie’s fingers inside her mesh butterfly gloves went numb as an icy chill sank into the pit of her stomach.

He couldn’t be… but that would be exactly like Katniss and Haymitch, wouldn’t it? The two of them, thick as thieves, making a deal before the Reaping to protect Peeta at all costs. To keep him out of it. They were alike in that way – selfish.

She reached into the bowl and drew out the name. Her heart sank.

“Haymitch Abernathy,” she read and closed her eyes.

“I volunteer as tribute,” Peeta Mellark said, almost serene with calm and instantly Haymitch began protesting, voice barely audible over the roaring in her ears.

Effie faced the crowd as Peeta came to stand beside her, jaw set stubbornly, and Effie abruptly hated herself, saw that same hatred reflected in the eyes of the rough-spun people of District 12. If not her, she knew, it would just be another Capitol Escort here in her place but…

She swallowed. “Well,” she said. “I suppose all that is left is to...”

She didn’t see who began the salute but she saw it spread, rippling over the crowd. On either side of her, like a matched set of bookends, Katniss and Peeta lifted their hands and mimicked the gesture.

Effie felt her knees go weak. No. No, no, no, didn’t they see the Peacekeepers? Were they out of their minds? This could only end in—

Katniss was yanked backwards only seconds before Peeta, dragged back through the door.

“Wait!” Effie protested, but her protests went ignored, and she watched in horror as Katniss yelled a strangled desperate goodbye. Haymitch crossed the stage.

“Come on, sweetheart, we don’t want to be here much longer,” he muttered, taking her upper arm and hurrying her through the same doorway.

“They didn’t even let her say goodbye,” Effie said, righteous anger surging through her, even as she stumbled alongside Haymitch. “Of all the obnoxious, _rude—_ ”

“We’ll be lucky if that’s the worst they do,” Haymitch snapped. Effie ground her heel into the floor abruptly, yanking her arm back out of his grip. She’d surprised him, she could tell, as he turned back to her, but the surprise quickly slipped into exasperation.

“And you!” she demanded, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. She was distinctly aware that this was not ladylike, not the elegant way that cultured ladies of her station were expected to handle their uglier emotions, but she was so angry and desperate and upset and afraid that she found she didn’t really care. “Care to explain yourself?”

Haymitch scowled. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

“You were going to volunteer, weren’t you?” she said, and try as she might, she couldn’t quite keep the quaver out of her voice. “If I had pulled Peeta’s name.”

Haymitch looked at her for a long moment and Effie knew she was right.

“I promised Katniss,” he said finally and Effie sucked in a breath.

“Promised her what? To sacrifice yourself?”

“I promised to protect him,” Haymitch snapped, stepping closer. There was an angry red crawling up his throat, burning in his cheeks, an unidentifiable emotion in his eyes.

“To die for him?” Effie snapped back. “At least Peeta has a chance in there. At least Peeta—”

“Are you saying I don’t have a chance?” Haymitch demanded and Effie threw up her hands.

“That’s precisely what I’m saying,” she hissed. “Look at yourself, Haymitch. The other Champions are much younger. They are in shape. They haven’t spent their Victor years drinking themselves mindlessly into an oblivion.”

Haymitch scoffed. “Wow. Great, thanks, so glad to hear this fantastic picture that you have of me.”

“That’s not what this is about and you know it,” Effie said and to her horror, felt her throat closing up once again. Do not cry, Effie Trinket. Don’t you dare begin to cry now. She took a deep steadying breath.

Haymitch sighed, reaching up and yanking his fingers roughly through his hair. Effie noticed, bizarrely, that he’d actually put on a decent jacket for the Reaping. Had he even combed his hair? It was as if he’d known they would have to go directly to the train. As if he’d known that something would happen that would prevent him from going home again.

“Better me die in there than him,” he said finally, voice low and gruff and tired. “Peeta’s a good kid, Effie. You know as well as I do that the chances of them both coming outta this alive again are slim. Katniss and I… we understood each other.”

Effie felt something inside her chest snap cleanly in two and without another word she crossed the space between them and threw her arms around Haymitch’s neck, dragging him in and hugging him tightly.

Haymitch let out a soft grunt of surprise that Effie felt reverberate through her body. His hands landed somewhat uncomfortably on her hips, not quite hugging her back so much as simply holding her in place. Effie took a deep breath, trying desperately to steady herself.

“You two are just alike,” she muttered, voice clogged with every emotion she was trying to force back into her chest. “Selfish. Better you than anyone else, right? Well, what about the people you’re leaving behind?”

_What about me?_ she didn’t say. She knew perfectly well that she was probably the last person the three of them considered when making their plans. She didn’t belong in their little group. She was an outsider, their Escort only. She had no idea what it was like inside the Arena. She wasn’t one of them.

Effie sucked in a breath and released Haymitch, stepping backwards until there was an appropriate distance between them again. She reached up and flicked away the moisture that had gathered under her eyes.

Haymitch was watching her warily, his hands still hovering awkwardly in midair, as though he wasn’t sure what to do with them now that she’d stepped away.

“We’re going to miss the train,” she said quietly and without another word walked past him down the corridor.

\--

Effie paced alone in the viewing room, wearing a hole in the carpet. She hadn’t slept through the night in days, stealing fitful hours here and there, and she was beginning to flinch at shadows. The glitz and glamourof the days before the Quarter Quell officially began was beginning to feel like a dream from ages ago – had she honestly stood in the middle of a swirling gala, keeping one eye on Katniss and Peeta and the other on Haymitch?

She’d thought he might ask her to dance. Even now the thought burned with bitter embarrassment. Everything going on and she’d thought that perhaps Haymitch Abernathy might be thinking of asking her to dance.

Ludicrous. He’d disappeared partway into the festivities anyway and she’d been left to watch over Katniss and Peeta alone, an anxious buzz growing more insistent beneath her skin with every passing moment.

And now she was alone in the viewing suite, her heart in her throat and her nerves completely frayed. Haymitch had been gone for hours – slipping from the room while she’d been rearranging the empty water glasses on the side table without so much as a goodbye.

She wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. She wanted Cinna – but Cinna was dead. She knew that too, as certain as she knew her own name.

The dress had been utterly breathtaking, even before Katniss had spun. Cinna had really outdone himself, making his last stand like that.

Effie stopped in the middle of the room, watching the screen blankly as the leaves rustled in the dark and the camera flicked from viewpoint to viewpoint. She hadn’t understood, at the time, what it had meant. What Cinna had done. Why was it that she always felt two steps behind everyone else?

The expression on Haymitch’s face, when she’d asked where Cinna had gotten to, was burned into her memory. Part pity, part disbelief. She’d felt like a child, ashamed and frustrated as he’d said, almost gently, that he didn’t think Cinna was going to be coming back.

Effie sank down onto the settee, twisting her hands in her lap.

“ _Katniss! Remember who the real enemy is!”_

Effie’s head snapped up, eyes fixed back on the screen. How long had she been sitting there, lost in her own thoughts? What had she missed?

The cameras were zoomed in on Katniss’s face, her expression fierce and calculating. Effie stood up, holding her breath as slowly, slowly, Katniss lowered her bow.

What was she doing?

Thunder rumbled in the distance and Effie reached up to clutch at her necklace, needing something to hold onto, anything to ground herself.

It was Finnick she’d been talking to – Finnick Odair, from District 4. Gold winked at his wrist as the camera flashed to him before cutting back to Katniss and Effie swallowed.

Well. The tokens had meant something to her, at least.

“ _Katniss? Get away from that tree!”_

Finnick sounded desperate, his voice hoarse and Effie took a step closer to the screen, panic surging in her blood – no, no, please, not Katniss, please – when Katniss drew back her bow, determination in her eyes and pointed her arrow at the sky.

It was over in seconds – a flash of lightning obscuring the view before the screens glitched out and the feed was lost.

Effie stood there, numb with shock. Never once in all her years of watching the Hunger Games could she remember a technical difficulty like this. It… it was impossible. It went against everything Effie knew.

She sank back onto the settee, hands dropping limply into her lap, staring at the blank screen.

And then it hit her, all in a rush. The conversations that had died the moment she’d entered the room. The few times she’d glimpsed Haymitch talking to Plutarch Heavensbee, of all people. The deliberate way Haymitch had directed her attention during the gala.

“He could have just told me,” she whispered, the sound of her own voice startling in the vastness of the empty room. Effie looked down at the little white gloves on her hands and couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so alone. She began to peel them off, carefully, tugging gently on the fingertips so that they didn’t crease in an unappealing way.

He could have told her. She wouldn’t have said a word. Did he really think after everything that she still believed in any of it?

Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them away, letting them trail down her cheeks, cutting crisp lines in the power she’d reapplied only an hour earlier for lack of anything else to do with her hands.

Once the gloves were off she looked down at her hands – _her_ hands, the same hands she’d had all her life. Fingers just a bit too short to be deft or elegant, her fingernails cut short to head off the ugly biting habit she’d never had the self-discipline to break. The tiny scar on her left index finger from grabbing at a warm pot when she was a child.

She’d pulled name after name with these hands. She could dress them up in whatever gloves she could find but it wouldn’t change the fact that they were her hands.

Behind her, the door to the viewing room slammed open.

Effie didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. “How rude,” she said, voice only barely holding steady. “To barge in on a lady like this, without even knocking.”

She lifted her eyes from her hands and fixed a stern gaze on the Peacekeeper standing in the doorway. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners?” she asked.

He snapped his fingers. “Take her,” he said and Effie found herself dragged upwards, one Peacekeeper on either side, their fingers digging bruises into her upper arms as they forced her out of the room and down the hallway.

Minutes bled into hours bled into days bled into weeks – they seemed to grow more disgusted with her the more obvious it became that she truly didn’t know anything. Without valuable information, their handling grew rougher, more careless. Any hope Effie might have had of being treated like a lady was gone the moment the first blow landed. The Rebellion had been launched – the Capitol was at War.

And Effie had chosen her side, even if that side hadn’t chosen her back.

She lay on her side in the dim little room they’d locked her in, staring at the wall, feeling her body ache. They’d taken her wig, her jewelry, her heels – the dress she’d worn had been so ripped and dirtied by the interrogations that they’d been forced to give her something else to put on, a frayed and ugly, itchy thing that sagged off her body.

She wasn’t going to last another interrogation. That much was obvious. She had never broken a bone before this, had never even had a particularly nasty sprain, but so much of her body was bruised and battered and cracked and sliced that it wouldn’t matter if they tried to be gentle in the next round – sooner or later one of their blows was going to snap something that couldn’t be ignored.

Her thoughts drifted listlessly, melting one into the other without any clear direction. The last series of questions had been about Haymitch again – they seemed convinced that he’d confided in her before he’d disappeared to help lead the biggest rebellion in Panem history.

Ha. As if Haymitch Abernathy would have trusted her with anything useful. He hadn’t even cared enough to say goodbye.

Effie closed her eyes, sliding one arm around herself in the closest approximation of a hug she could get without jostling her broken ribs.

Well. If she had to die somewhere, she supposed this was as good a place as any. She might not have had any information to give Snow, but his believing she did had kept him busy, at least for a little while. She could buy them a few more precious minutes, at least.

“Ha,” she rasped, her voice a hoarse, strangled mess. She opened her eyes, watching the wall swim unsteadily in her vision with detached interest.

The door to her cell clicked open. Effie didn’t move, even when the voice in the doorway swore long and low and harsh. _Language_ , she said. Or... did she? She couldn’t feel her hands anymore – her legs were numb and her lips and tongue felt swollen and clumsy.

A pair of hands touched her shoulder and she thought she heard her name. Or maybe she didn’t. Whatever. It didn’t really matter anymore anyway, did it?

Effie closed her eyes. Let the hands do whatever they wanted with her. She’d done what she could.

\--

The first thing she’d requested was a scarf, to wrap up her hair. The young man tasked with bringing her back to life had seemed a bit confused by her request but had agreed readily enough, scrounging up a bit of fabric for her and helping her sit up in the makeshift infirmary bed so she could get every bit of wispy white-blonde hair up inside the scarf.

There. Effie couldn’t exactly describe what about it made her feel better, but some of the panic she’d felt burning at the base of her throat abated the moment she’d been able to hide that part of her away.

Jerrant, the boy’s name was, and he’d been studying medicine before escaping the Capitol. He wasn’t a full-fledged doctor, but he was pretty close and these days, that was good enough. Effie had sat and listened blankly as he’d explained her injuries and told her just how close to death she’d been.

They’d lost her twice on the way back, he’d said. Twice. She had died, twice.

“Why am I here?” she asked, voice hoarse with disuse. Jerrant had looked surprised by the question.

“With the extent of your injuries, you’ll be in the infirmary for a while yet.”

“No,” Effie croaked, looking him in the eye. “Why am I _here_? No one would have gone back for me. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Jerrant shrugged. “I wasn’t a part of that crew, ma’am. All I know is that Heavensbee and Abernathy said that under no circumstances was I to let you die.”

He’d walked off then to tend to another patient, leaving Effie to turn his words over in her head before the drugs put her back to sleep.

She wasn’t sure what had woken her up – Haymitch certainly hadn’t been making any noise, sitting beside her bed like that.

She blinked at him, disoriented. He looked hunted, caught out, like he hadn’t expected to have to explain himself. And maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he hadn’t been planning on her waking up at all.

“Are you actually there?” she asked, the words a harsh rasp in the solemn stillness of the infirmary.

Haymitch hesitated, then nodded. She lifted a hand, ignoring the bruises yellowing on her arms – and oh, Jerrant hadn’t been kidding about that finger, it really had set crooked – and put her hand on his knee.

“Huh,” she said, looking at her hand thoughtfully. “I didn’t actually think you were.”

“Effie,” Haymitch said, voice breaking, and she looked up into his face. “I thought— I thought you’d be safe.”

“Yes, well, that didn’t quite work out the way you’d planned,” she said and pulled her hand back.

Haymitch made a strange motion, like he’d been going to catch her hand before she could pull it away, but instead let his hand fall back onto his lap, tapping his fingers restlessly on his knees.

Effie took stock of her body for a moment, mentally cataloging every place it still hurt, before carefully beginning to sit up.

Haymitch hissed out a breath, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you insane?” he snapped. “Do you have any idea—”

“Oh, just shut up and help me,” Effie said. There was a beat of surprised silence before Haymitch’s hand slid around her shoulder to rest between her shoulder blades, a gentle support as she leveraged herself more or less up into a sitting position. He didn’t move his hand, its weight a comforting warmth through the thin gray shirt she was wearing.

Effie examined him in the dim, chemical light of the windowless room. The circles beneath his eyes were darker, his hair a bit longer, with a bit more gray blooming at his temples. But his eyes were the same, that bright electric blue that had first caught her attention as a girl, standing beneath a wide screen in open-mouthed awe as the boy from District 12 set his jaw and raised a fist in victory during the Second Quarter Quell.

“You could have just told me,” she said finally, her voice very soft. Haymitch’s hand slipped from her back and he dropped his face into his hands, elbows on his knees.

“I thought,” he said, voice muffled, “they’d leave you alone. If I didn’t tell you anything. If I kept you separate from it all. They’d assume you were still one of them and leave you be.”

Effie huffed out a laugh that made her wince, one hand going to her bandaged ribs. “Well, you were bound to lose at least one of your gambles.” She looked at him for a moment, at the tension in his shoulders and found she couldn’t really dredge up any anger. The rage had been beaten out by worry, then by pain, and the only thing Effie felt now was exhausted. She reached for Haymitch and brushed her fingers carefully against his cheek. He lifted his head, locking eyes with her as she gently brushed a thumb against the rough patches of facial hair that he’d been neglecting to shave.

“I’m glad,” she said slowly, trying to figure out how to piece together everything she was feeling, “that if you had to lose one of your gambles, that I was the one to lose.”

Haymitch frowned, but Effie quieted him with a sharp look.

“The rest were so important,” she said. “Katniss and Peeta. Plutarch. This place.” She gestured around them with her free hand. “Those were the ones that needed to survive. Not me.”

Haymitch made a noise low in his throat, a choked growl and reached up to press his hand carefully over hers against his cheek. “Now who’s being selfish?” he muttered.

Effie raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

Haymitch shifted abruptly, leaning forward on the chair and before Effie knew quite what was happening he’d reached for her and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her, minding her bruises and bandages.

Effie felt her heart stutter in her chest, even as she hesitantly curled her fingers into his shirt in return.

“I’m sorry,” Haymitch said into her shoulder, his breath hot against the crook of her neck. Effie squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to cry. “I’m so sorry, Effie. I know that doesn’t mean shit, not after what they did to you, but—”

“Haymitch—” Effie tried to interrupt, but he ignored her, pulling back just a bit to look her in the eye. His expression was a bit wild, unhinged, uncomfortable, desperate.

“You need to know,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Not a day went by – not a single, damn one – where you didn’t cross my mind.”

Effie stared at him. Her heart was hot where it thumped against her healing ribs and she was certain she was blushing. “You don’t have to lie to make me feel better, Haymitch,” she said, for lack of anything else. “That’s… that’s just rude.”

He looked taken aback. “I’m— did you just call me rude? Here I am, telling you I missed you and you called me rude?”

Effie opened her mouth to point out that he hadn’t said he’d missed her at all, but before she could speak Haymitch started to laugh, the noise low and rusty. He leaned back in and pulled her close again, hugging her as tightly as he could without pressing down on any of her injuries.

“I’ve really, really missed you,” he said hoarsely and Effie closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him back.

“Me too,” she whispered and hid her face in his shoulder.


End file.
